Re: Thunderbird: definable external editor

On 1/14/2010 10:53 AM, Gorm wrote:
> On 6 Jan, 19:27, Jeff<[email protected]>  wrote:
>> On 1/6/2010 10:19 AM, Jeff wrote:
>>
>>> It would be lovely to be able to define an external text editor for
>>> Thunderbird, and even better if the user is given access to all headers
>>> in the editor, as was done in the old console-mode newsreaders and mail
>>> user agents of yore (tin, trn, yarn, elm, pine-- among others). To
>>> understand why this would be useful, please note the line-wrap problems
>>> in my immediately preceding post, 'Automatic offline mode', which came
>>> of my attempt to reflow the last paragraph. Thanks,
>>
>> I just realised that this might not be quite clear. I would like to use
>> an external editor rather than Thunderbird's built-in, for composing
>> messages. It would also be lovely if the user could edit, in the
>> external editor, the headers that will appear in the outgoing message.
>>
>> Jeff
>
> I certainly support your idea. Even after having got used to the in-
> built editor I find it rudimentary. Although not often but I would
> from time to time like the possibility to make the mail a bit special,
> perhaps not like the IncrediMail, but something along their image
> embedding features. It is possible to it with Thunderbird but it
> demands a good portion of knowledge whereas it is a fairly easy task
> in both MS Word and Oo Writer.
> Gorm

Since writing this post, I've learned that there is a Thunderbird add-on 
that makes possible the use of an external editor:

http://globs.org/articles.php?lng=en&pg=2

Unfortunately, it only supports access to a limited set of headers; 
perhaps this is a limitation of Thunderbird. It does, however, support 
HTML and, from what I've read, works fine with MS Word. Search the web 
for "Thunderbird external editor" and you will see many discussions 
about it on various boards.

Jeff